September 11th Foretoldby Susan M. WatkinsSince September 11, each of us has had to find a way to reconnect with the world in something like the old routines and philosophies that comprised our individual perspectives before those profoundly shocking events took place. Any sort of belief that our reality might originate from within has not provided an especially comfortable cushion. In fact, such ideas are often unsettling and not infrequently maddening, since they inevitably lead to questions about unconscious knowledge and intent. As in: What inner focus led each of us—every one of us in this reality, wherever we might live and however immediately or not we were involved—to experience this literal explosion of tragedy and social upheaval that seemed to come upon us all without warning? What collective purpose does this represent? Over time I’ve begun to form my own thoughts about such questions, and within that framework, what is particularly interesting to me is the apparent fact that, however horrific and appalling all this has been, the one thing it was not was “unknown.” Just on the outward level of apparent happenstance, there were dozens of stories rising out of September 11 about people who lived or died by making last-minute changes of plans, either consciously (in deciding to take an earlier or later flight, or to go into work later than usual, or not at all) or “un”consciously (as with the fellow who fell asleep on the subway for the first time ever and thus missed his morning stop under the World Trade Center). Disasters like this (and indeed all events), whether small and personal or huge and universal, are always surrounded by these tales (the financier George Vanderbilt canceled his plans at the last minute to sail on the Titanic because his mother had a “bad feeling” about it), and they are fascinating and worthy of record and study in themselves. Inner knowing and response to that knowing is the gel that comprises experience, after all.

Just as intriguing is the kind of precognition that comes in the form of dreams and dream-like correlations. As I discovered some years ago when I did the research for a book about dreams in a small town, such prescience, when it happens, rarely gives a complete picture or an explicit warning. Instead, it tends to provide glimpses of the thing to come, as if tailored to your personal need-to-know factor. Moreover, these “glimpses” seem to keep giving out bits of information after the fact, in something like an awareness/response cool-down mode.

I have some examples of pre- and post-cognitive dreams about September 11. My own occurred September 8 or 9, the Friday or Saturday night before. Uncharacteristically, I didn’t write it down (since writing makes things more real for me, maybe this was a subliminal defense mechanism). It was in vivid color and perfectly clear, though confused. I was trying to make my way down through piles of fiery rubble to get to the depths of hell to rescue a friend—someone who in fact had died some years ago. Why this friend should be in hell, specifically the last circle of hell as in Dante’s Inferno, I didn’t know, but it was up to me to find him and lead him out of there. Along the way, through dark-fire mazes of rocks and twisted building girders, I kept meeting other people clambering through the ruins, but nobody would give me any directions or help me in any way. I crawled and stumbled on and on, lower and lower, and the noise and confusion got worse and worse—until I woke up, unsure if I’d found my friend. Had I glimpsed him down there, at the bottom of hell, or not? Had I failed, and left him behind? For several moments, I was disoriented and heartsick.

But as I came awake I also thought of The 13th Warrior, the Antonio Banderas movie I’d seen for the first time the previous evening. It’s a retelling of the Beowulf story, and in it, Banderas and his Northmen companions go deep into a cave to root out the leaders of the mysterious invaders that have been terrorizing nearby villages. The underground scenes are vivid, and lit by fire, so as I came to, I figured this must be the source of my dream’s storyline.

Not until after the WTC attacks and subsequent events did I connect my dream with the scenes of rescue workers digging through the fiery ruins, and for that matter with the associative element of the Northmen searching out the enemy in his cave, the same words and imagery used by US officials in post-September 11 military response. It’s also interesting that in The 13th Warrior, Banderas’s character is an Arab, a heroic figure who helps defeat the adversary and lives to record the tale. But why, I wondered, was this particular friend of mine the object of my dream-search? Other friends had passed away in recent years; why him?

It wasn’t until later that week, when I was on the phone with Moment Point Press editor Susan Ray, comparing dream-notes, that the connection came to me. Thunderstruck, I realized that my dead friend’s birthday was on September 11! Which seemed like a whopper of a hint of events to come—certainly it’s a whopper piece of hindsight—but nothing compared with the dream that Susan related to me:

“Mathew [my husband] and I are sitting at an outdoor cafe in a wharf-like area. It has a military look about it, and it’s in a city—lots of concrete. Mathew leaves to do an errand at a government- or insurance-type office and soon the sky over my head is filled with huge, black planes. They’re flying very low, very slowly, and I’m filled with dread. But nobody else seems to be paying attention.

“I look to a nearby table and see an older gentleman sitting alone. I know telepathically that he’s been through WWII, so I watch to see his reaction to the planes. He whispers, “Oh, Shit,” with a tone that matches the dread I’m feeling. So I immediately get up to look for Mathew. And in the near distance, in the direction the planes are flying, I can see and hear explosions. Still, no one seems to be paying attention.

“I spend the rest of the dream frantically searching for Mathew, while all around me people are ignoring what’s happening. Everyone has this maddening don’t-bother-me-I’ve-got-work-to-do attitude as I ask them for help. As the dream ends I spot Mathew, back at the table where we started, looking for me.

“That morning—Sunday, September 9—I recounted the dream, in detail, to Mathew. We came to the conclusion that it was a stress dream. But that didn’t ring true to me. I wasn’t particularly stressed and the dream had had an epic feel to it. Two days later, September 11, Mathew called from work (a corporate office building outside of Boston) and said, “Turn on the TV; you won’t believe what’s happening.”

Note the coincidental elements in Susan’s dream and mine of trying to find someone in the midst of a specific kind of chaos, the ultimate nightmare scenario to come out of those scenes of wreckage and horror—at least for those on the ground. James, an email correspondent who lives in England, seems to have picked up on the plight of those in the air. As often happens with precognition, his dream, on the night of September 10, has roots in another, coincidental incident—in his case, a television program he had watched that same evening, a fire fighting documentary on a UK Discovery channel. In much the same way as my watching The 13th Warrior, elements of his UK program merged in a compelling clairvoyant blend of dream and event. “The show featured a giant towering inferno that had happened in Philadelphia some years ago,” James wrote. “The outcome of it in some ways was like another version of the WTC disaster. The pictures of the burnt out and collapsed Philadelphia skyscraper were the last thing I saw before I went to sleep.

“During my dream that night, I had the sensation of flying on a plane (not as a passenger but from an all-angle vantage point) that was certainly on a rocky flight path with emergency lighting on—golden brown diffused light you might get from burning embers.” The next day, he switched on his radio just in time to hear an announcer report the first plane hitting the WTC. And, of course, he watched the rest of it unfold on TV—almost as if official news itself were part of an ongoing prescience.

James also said that for days before September 11, he’d been suffused with “a general feeling of gloom and demolition,” as he put it, “as I used to get when an IRA bomb or threat was imminent here in London.” Reading this email, I remembered a sentence that had been playing over and over in my mind for weeks; I’d thought it was the opening of an oncoming novel (which it might be anyway). “Later,” the sentence droned, “it was remembered how clear the sky had been on that last autumn day of the old world.” After September 11, various news outlets, including The New Yorker, described that day in almost exactly the same words.

Since then, aftermath dreams and reverberations have been spilling over, not surprisingly. Friends have been emailing me dreams filled with panic and guilt, though hopeful resolution has begun to show through, too. One person saw a portion of herself split off to become a second and separate entity that had supposedly been murdered, yet this self wasn’t quite dead and wasn’t quite human, either. Another friend, who is ardently opposed to this country’s military campaign, dreamed of being put to death in an electric chair that was a mini-nuclear device; the condemned, who were dissidents, had to set off the devices themselves. Yet the moment of death was only a sudden, painless sensation of rapidly floating up to the ceiling, “like we’re on our way somewhere,” he said. Reassurance from the psyche? Still another friend dreamed of challenging Jesus and Muhammad to show up and fight it out between them. But the challenge was a no-show; thus, no confrontation came about.

Which is, one would most sincerely hope, the most accurate precognition of all.

Susan M. Watkins is a former newspaper reporter, feature writer, and columnist, and has also worked in radio news. She is the author of *Conversations with Seth* and *Speaking of Jane Roberts: Remembering the Author of the Seth Material*, published by a Moment Point Press, as well as books and fiction in other genres.(c)2002, Susan M. Watkins. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the Conscious Creation Journal.

Thus far, Parts 1-11 explored the first five chapters of Jane Roberts’ Dreams, “Evolution, and Value Fulfillment, Vol. 1. Hopefully you’ve noticed the inclusion of non-Sethian concepts and wondered how they fit in or where they come from. Parts 12-15 provide those answers and more. As many of you know, I no longer feel that the “Seth-in-a-vacuum” approach works in terms of adequate exegesis (interpretation). In other words, just harping on “Seth said” gets very circular and insular at best, and at worst, opens the door to distortions never intended by Seth, Jane, or Rob.

Therefore, if the Seth material is ever to “take its place alongside” the Western world’s major philosophical works as Seth suggested it might, then it needs to be understood within an historical view that shows what’s old and what’s new, not just what’s trendy today.

To remedy this, I have begun to explore Ken Wilber’s integral approach, which includes a comparison of the Seth material with the world’s esoteric, transformative traditions (all the major religions have one, but they are buried under the calcified weight of exoteric, translative front ends that no longer deal with the founder’s trailblazing personal realizations).

My goal, then, is to show just how Seth’s maps fit in with those that come before, because if various esoteric mapmakers have been in the ballpark over the past 2,500 years, then Seth should be in very good company. Remember, I’m not talking about calcified exoteric distortions, many which Seth criticizes in the material. I’m talking about the esoteric core, the gnostic inner core that always points to personal transformation and remembrance of Source. All authentic esoteric traditions bear remarkable similarities, even with the vagaries of ever-changing cultural baggage (premodern, modern, and postmodern worldviews).

Seen in this light, then, I hope to show that there is something old and new in the Seth material. Old in the sense of perennial wisdom that attempts to express itself within every historical epoch through revelation, inspiration, and remembrance. And new in the sense that being just over forty years old, the Seth material exists in a postmodern guise produced within the world’s greatest democracy (warts and all) to date. So it is colored by these factors.

Additional Thoughts

So there you have it, a summary of the first five chapters of Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, Vol. 1, where Seth chronicles the emergence of all of consciousness – including Us! – into physical energy-matter from a Causal Source he calls All-That-Is.

The creation of the world and everything in it… hmmm, I can just hear comedian Bill Murray in his best Caddy Shack character voice saying, “this is truly a Cinderella story, a little bundle of energy named All-That-Is dreams of becoming entire universes and then everything in them, from cheese wiz to cheese cloth, caterpillars to camels, carpenters to chemists, and in a blinding flash of inspiration sinks a cosmic 600 billion foot putt that bursts forth to create everything including you and me.”

But seriously, if we understand that everything – all energy-matter and space-time – is an expression of consciousness, all lovingly fueled by a Causal Source, then Seth’s creation myth provides a postmodern tapestry in which to better understand the complexities of reality creation in a way that premodern religious and modern scientific myths do not. As we have briefly seen, Seth wove his story within a cosmology that includes:

All-That-Is/consciousness units (CUs/causal field)

sleepwalkers/electromagnetic energy units (EEs/subtle field)

Frameworks 4, 3, 2 (subtle field)

the dream state (subtle field) functions as a “language of translation” for the waking state (physical field)

Framework 1 (physical field)

the paradoxical “before the beginning”

families of consciousness (innate intention)

the multidimensional psyche (outer ego, subconscious, inner ego)

the inner senses (deep intuitions/translogical hyperception)

reincarnation in the context of simultaneous time frameworks

probabilities

In closing, then, let’s take a further look at the key concepts in Seth’s creation myth: dreams, evolution, and value fulfillment. Notice that each one centers on either the physical, subtle, or causal fields. For instance, dreams focus on the subtle, evolution on the physical, and value fulfillment on the causal. Thus, Seth even used the book’s title to point out key involutionary/evolutionary forces at work in the ongoing creation of our universe. However, to make the flow smoother, the order in this closing section has been changed to evolution (physical), dreams (subtle), and value fulfillment (causal).

On Evolution (Physical Field)

“Matter, which appears to be merely passive and without form and arrangement, has even in its simplest state an urge to fashion itself by a natural evolution into a more perfect constitution.” ~ Immanuel Kant

It is interesting that Seth’s creation myth bears a remarkable similarity to other creation myths from around the world. Though they are beyond the scope of this essay, one myth in particular, the Aboriginal myth of the alcheringa or the “dreamtime” as English researcher Frank Gillen coined it in 1896, bears a closer look. It maps closely to the essential nature of what Seth describes in the opening chapters of Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment.

According to this Aboriginal creation myth, time emerged from a timeless realm, supernatural beings created the world and then fell into an exhausted “slumber” becoming the very parts of the earth itSelf – oceans, forests, lakes, mountains, and sky. These supernatural beings seem remarkably similar to Seth’s sleepwalkers – those early entities “in trance” who formed the planet, its geography, and ecosystem.

In the Aboriginal myth, the action of dreaming plays a central role in the creation. According to physicist Fred Alan Wolf (b.1934):

“As new as the Dreamtime concept of this reality may appear to us, Australian Aborigines claim to have ‘memory’ of this realm dating back nearly 150,000 years. From this realm, a long time ago, the world of mind, matter, and energy arose as a dream of the ‘Great Spirit.’ Thus Aboriginal thinking suggests that the universe or God is itself dreaming into existence all of what we experience.” (17)

“The dreamtime came to an end when the supernatural beings left the surface of the earth. But the mythical past was not lost forever; on the contrary, it is periodically recovered through the tribal rituals.

“When all these earth-born supernatural beings had accomplished their labors and completed their wanderings, overpowering weariness fell upon them. The work that they had performed had taxed their strength to the utmost, thus they sank back into their original slumbering state and their bodies either vanished into the ground – often at the site where they had first emerged – or turned into rocks, trees, or sacred objects.” (18)

Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

The modern belief system of evolution – the linear development from “lower” to “higher” life forms based upon the random, UNconscious principles of natural selection and genetic mutation – is an inadequate model to explain the dreaming nature of the subtle field, and the progenitor nature of the causal field. And this is not to discredit the brilliant insights of Charles Darwin, who dealt primarily with biospheric evolution, not physiospheric or noospheric, but only to suggest that a postmodern theory is required to integrate Causal Consciousness back into the story. And Seth’s conscious creation myth clearly supports that.

Now, let’s take a brief look back in time, to cosmologies in Western history that have been overshadowed due to a variety of political, scientific, and religious reasons to get a sense of where the belief system of evolution came from. Up until the sixteenth century, the consensus view dating back to Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. had the earth at the epicenter of God’s divine domain. Then, modern Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus came along and scandalized the premodern religious ruling class by showing that the earth was not the center of the universe, that it actually revolved around the sun. And later that century:

“A generation after Copernicus, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) dealt a potentially fatal blow to the crumbling Aristotelian cosmology by declaring that not even the Sun was at the center of the universe – there is no center, he said. The universe is acentric – infinite in space and in time. In Bruno’s cosmology, there was no creation – mythological, theological, or scientific. The universe was eternal; matter was co-eternal with god. In fact, the universe of matter was god because matter itself was intelligent. Whereas Copernicus survived the Holy Inquisition by keeping quiet about his ideas until the year of his death, Bruno, much more audacious and provocative, paid for his ‘sins’ [of challenging the authority of Aristotle and the Church] by being burned alive at the stake in 1600.” (19)

It wasn’t long after that Isaac Newton (1642-1727), a modern mathematician and scientist, formulated his theories based upon the belief that the universe was a vast machine set into motion by a God quite separate and outside of the physical field. Underlying laws could be known once the governing principles were discerned. In essence, Newton believed that physical reality could be understood via scientific inquiry and reason. Many others contributed and expanded this new view of the universe for several centuries leading up to Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and his theories on evolution, first published in The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life in 1859.

Though Darwin did not believe that all matter and energy was conscious in some form, there were other thinkers, notably mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) who did. In his later years he outlined a philosophy called Process Thought that proposed that all energy-matter had some kind of experience. It all depended on perspectives. Thus, he extended experience and perspectives all the way down to the atomic. He recognized that, contrary to the popular Newtonian view the universe is one big machine, the Whole was always greater than the sum of its parts.

In the twentieth century, physicist David Bohm (1917-1991), a student of Einstein’s, suspected the existence of hidden source fields from which the physical springs. He formulated something similar to Seth’s frameworks of consciousness. What Seth terms Framework 1 Bohm terms the explicate order, Framework 2 is the implicate order. Bohm identified what he called quantum potential that physicists still have not proved or disproved to this day.

Evolutionary theorist Ervin Laszlo (b.1932) continues to explore the limits of the physical field and scientifically prove the existence of hidden source fields. In Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything (2004) Laszlo integrates cosmology, quantum physics, biology, and consciousness research. There is even a mention of Jane Roberts and Seth in the section on consciousness research (on p. 95). Bohm, Laszlo, and many like them are proof that postmodern scientists are working to extend science beyond the limits of premodern and modern theories.

However, we still have a long way to go before we scientifically understand the mechanics of Seth’s conscious creation myth and its CUs, EEs, and quantum fields. The paradox of time and no-time fields, and All-That-Is as involutionary Ground and evolutionary Goal still vexes modern and postmodern evolutionary theory. Treated by the modern mainstream as though it were a fact, evolution, natural selection, and genetic mutation are wielded as the calcified dogma of scientism, not science, when proponents don’t provide adequate explanations for how consciousness exists beyond a mere epiphenomenon of the brain. Again, Consciousness desperately seeks to find its way back into the postmodern world.

Ken Wilber (b.1949) is a postmodern psychologist and philosopher who has worked on a theory of consciousness for over thirty years. In Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality (1995) he formulated what he calls an integral theory of consciousness that highlights four simultaneous perspectives, none of which can be reduced to the other. These quadrants exist in our awareness right now:

Each quadrant, then, shares an evolutionary axis from relatively “lower” to “higher” development that includes gems from Darwin’s theory; for example, the reptilian brain stem is a “lower” form of the mammalian brain. It also features important first person perspectives missing from modern, reductionist empiricism. Thus, Wilber greatly expands upon problematic areas like the exclusion of subjective experience and its relationship to objective experience (intersubjectivity, interobjectivity). He shows that,

“…consciousness actually exists distributed across all four quadrants with all of their various levels and dimensions. There is no one quadrant (and certainly no one level) to which we can point and say, There is consciousness. Consciousness is in no way localized in that fashion. …It is true that the Upper Left quadrant [i.e., inner (subjective) / singular / I] is the locus of consciousness as it appears in an individual, but that’s the point: as it appears in an individual. Yet consciousness on the whole is anchored in, and distributed across, all of the quadrants – intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social. If you ‘erase’ any quadrant, they all disappear, because each is intrinsically necessary for the existence of the others.” (20)

The key to the quadrants, then, is that they prevent reductionism and promote integralism. That is, on the one hand modern science reduces all subjective, inner perspectives to things, its, and processes. Even the so-called holistic web of life systems theory omits interiors! On the other hand, extreme forms of certain postmodern theories, such as New Age idealism and panpsychism, reduce everything to interiors. The integral impulse simply situates both interiors and exteriors, individual and collective dimensions to serve as a check and balance against going to extremes.

Moreover, the latest version (Wilber-5) integrates physical, subtle, and causal fields, and offers extensive cross-cultural evidence for their existence. Thus, a more balanced and comprehensive methodology becomes a sine qua non. While there are many issues to be worked out in the decades ahead, this is the most comprehensive postmodern theory of consciousness to date, one that moves far beyond the modern Darwinian model because it includes consciousness and Consciousness.

Involution/Evolution

According to the gems of various premodern traditions, the primary paradox of All-That-Is just this: It is simultaneously both Ground and Goal, Designer and Designed, Unborn and Born, Transcendent and Immanent. The premodern traditions rightly claim this paradox can only be unraveled, fully disclosed, and directly realized through meditation and what Seth calls inner senses. Earlier, we summarized this primal paradox as follows:

Ken Wilber, who has done extensive cross-cultural research on the premodern traditions, explains it this way:

“Involution also means ‘to get involved, entangled, enmeshed.’ And using the term this way, it is best to speak of involution as Spirit’s [All-That-Is’] ‘descending into’ and getting ‘lost’ in or ‘entangled’ in the manifest world. In involution, Spirit goes out of Itself, alienates Itself, creates a manifest world of otherness and manyness, and becomes (illusorily) entangled and enmeshed in that illusory world [what Seth calls divine camouflage]. Then, in the second movement, Spirit begins the return to Spirit, as Spirit; it grows and evolves and develops, from matter to body to mind to soul to Itself. And this movement is then properly called evolution: Spirit is rolling out or turning out from its illusory [camouflage] involvement with Otherness.” (21)

Wilber’s Integral Psychology (2000) synthesizes more than one hundred premodern, modern, and postmodern developmental systems from East, West, North, and South. Theorists include Plotinus, Patanjali, St. Teresa, Baldwin, Freud, Leadbetter, Aurobindo, Steiner, Piaget, Grof, Tiller, Maslow, Gardener, Habermas, Gebser, Graves, Beck, Kohlberg, Armon, Gilligan, Kegan, Cook-Greuter, Wade, to name a few. However, it is only the premodern systems that include involution, and the reasons are beyond the scope of this essay, but involve the modern West’s dissociation of the three value spheres (science, art, and morals) mentioned earlier. So it is to the premoderns we must look for details on involution.

“… according to the [premodern] perennial philosophy, in order for evolution – which is the unfolding of higher structures – to occur at all, those higher structures must, in some sense, be present from the start: they must be enfolded, as potential, in the lower modes. If not, then evolution is nothing but creation ex nihilo, out of nothing. And, as theologians have long known, out of nothing you get nothing – ex nihilo nihil fit. And the story of involution is simply the story of how the higher modes came to be lost in the lower – how they came to be enwrapped and enfolded in the lower states. Involution, or the enfolding of the higher in the lower, is the precondition of evolution, or the unfolding of the higher states from the lower.” (22)

That lays the conceptual foundation, but just how does Causal Consciousness create matter? Put another way, what are the actual mechanics of conscious creation? According to postmodern philosopher Christian de Quincey (b.1949):

“… what Wilber’s model doesn’t clarify – a problem common to all emanationist ontologies [i.e. involution/evolution in physical, subtle, and causal fields], from Plotinus onwards – is how matter comes into being [i.e. is consciously created] through involution if reality begins with pure spirit or consciousness [“before the beginning”]. It is no more clear from Wilber’s [postmodern] model how matter can emerge from consciousness than how mind can emerge from matter in the [modern] materialists’ model.” (23)

In Radical Nature (2002) De Quincey offers a solution he calls radical naturalism. He claims, following Bruno, that matter and spirit are simply two sides of the same Ever-Present Reality all the way up and down. Interestingly, this is exactly what Seth’s CUs (causal) and EEs (subtle) attempt to show, namely, that Consciousness is simultaneously no-thing (transcendent) and some-thing (immanent). It’s merely the two sides of All-That-Is, reflections of the primal paradox. De Quincey suggests that there has always been matter and Consciousness, and thus no beginning and no end in any absolute terms, though his model is not clear on how a Big Bang fits in with the notion of involutionary/evolutionary cosmic cycles.

And to Wilber’s defense, he has explained “how matter comes into being through involution if reality begins with pure spirit or consciousness.”

Still, how does involution/evolution actually work? Alfred North Whitehead claimed in his final work Process and Reality (1929) that first person perspectives or “actual entities” extend down into atomic structures. This is consonant with Seth’s CUs and EEs, but again, they also include perspectives in causal and subtle fields. For example, Seth said:

“We will call the basic units of consciousness ‘CU’ [causal]…. From them EE units [subtle] are formed, and the first roots are sent out into the world of physical matter [physical].” (24)

“These units of consciousness (CUs) move faster than the speed of light, then – but that statement itself is meaningless in a way, since the units exists outside as well as inside the framework in which light itself has meaning [i.e., the physical field].

“As these units approach physical structure, however, they do slow down in your terms. Electrons, for example, are slow dullards in comparison with EE units. It goes without saying that the units of consciousness are ‘mental,’ or if you prefer, disembodied, though from their inner organization all physical forms emerge. Certain intensities are built up of unit organization even before the smallest physical particle, or even invisible ‘physical’ particle, exists. These units form what you think of as the mind, around which the structure of the brain is formulated. The units permeate the brain.” (25)

Again, the physical, subtle, and causal fields are simultaneously interpenetrated. But how do they co-function within the flow of time? Ken Wilber outlined the moment to moment relationship between involution and evolution – called microgeny – in The Atman Project (1980).

“… not only did the whole involutionary series [i.e. CUs => EEs => quantum fields] occur prior to one’s birth, one reenacts the entire series moment to moment [my emphasis]. In this moment and this moment and this, an individual is [All-That-Is] – but, in this moment and this moment and this, he ends up as John Doe, as a separate self, as an isolated body apparently bounded by other isolated bodies.

“… If an individual has evolved to the subtle realm, then he will remember the gross, mental, and subtle aspects of consciousness, but he will not remember the causal and ultimate aspects of this moment’s experience: they remain in the emergent [subconscious], awaiting emergence via remembrance. Evolution is simply the interception of microinvolution at higher and higher stages: the more evolved a person is, the less involved he is.” (26)

Thus, involution/evolution is a simultaneous process within all fields of All-That-Is. Beginnings and endings are only apparent in the physical field, but not in the subtle and causal. Seth further described the interactions between CUs, EEs, and quantum fields. In The “Unknown” Reality (1977), he used the term blinking to describe energy transformations between causal, subtle, and physical fields.

“At no time, as a rule, is your body not here to you. Your experience seems centered within it, with the rest of the world safely outside. However, the particular selectivity of your kind of consciousness rides over lapses that you do not recognize. In a manner of speaking, your bodies blink off and on like lights. Their reality fluctuates, from your standpoint. For that matter, so does the physical universe.

“You can understand what is meant by saying that your consciousness fluctuates – for each individual is aware of various intensities and concentrations. You are more alert, or, in your terms, more conscious on some occasions than others. Now the same applies to these units of consciousness – and to atoms, molecules, electrons, and other such phenomena. The world literally blinks off and on. This reality of fluctuation in no way bothers your own feeling of consistency, however. The ‘holes of nonexistence’ are plugged up by the process of selectivity. This process chooses significances then, again, around which experience is built, and around which ‘life’ is felt. The very sensations of one kind of life then automatically set up barriers against other such ‘world-schemes’ that do not correlate with their own.” (27)

In Seth Speaks (1972), he hints at how quantum fields (as atoms) simultaneously exist in parallel physical fields within subtle and causal fields.

“It seems as if an atom ‘exists’ steadily for a certain amount of time. Instead it phases in and out, so to speak. It fluctuates in a highly predictable pattern and rhythm. It can be perceived within your system [physical field] only at certain points in this fluctuation, so it seems to scientists that the atom is steadily present. They are not aware of any gaps of absence as far as the atom is concerned.

“In those periods of nonphysical projection, the off periods of fluctuation, the atoms ‘appear’ in another system of reality [parallel physical field]. In that system they are perceived in what are ‘on’ points of fluctuation, and in that system also then the atoms (seem to) appear steadily. There are many such points of fluctuation, but your system of course is not aware of them, nor of the ultimate actions, universes, and systems that exist within them.

“Now the same sort of behavior occurs on a deep, basic, secret, and unexplored psychological level. The physically oriented consciousness, responding to one phase of the atom’s activity, comes alive and awake to its particular existence, but in between are other fluctuations in which consciousness is focused upon entirely different systems of reality; each of these coming awake and responding, and each one having no sense of absence, and memory only of those particular fluctuations to which they respond.” (28)

Seth provides additional concepts like coordinate points to elaborate on the above. But the main point is what modern physicists model as quantum fields captures only a minute portion of the larger psychological reality of All-That-Is. Seth’s CU and EE metaphors hint at ways to begin to explore these hidden fields. Right now, when we manipulate quantum fields, for instance splitting the atom, we only manipulate its surface aspects. There are deeper psychological aspects waiting to be discovered and manipulated. Though Seth doesn’t provide the mathematics involved, he uses these simple metaphors to suggest that there are hidden subtle and causal fields nested within the physical. But we won’t even entertain the possibilities until our theories expand to include the Conscious aspects of matter, and Seth’s CUs and EEs are excellent theoretical jumping off points.

The possibilities are still the stuff of science fiction. But the best science fiction often precedes science fact, thinking of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Emerging postmodern worldviews will include some type of involutionary/evolutionary cosmology. Involution brings Causal Consciousness back into consideration, because it provides a Primal Cause for evolution that goes beyond simple natural selection and genetic mutation. Moreover, it suggests that scientists must cognitively and spiritually evolve even further before they can discover and learn to manipulate the as yet unknown causal and subtle dimensions of matter.

Up from Eden?

There have been three major stages of consciousness evolution to date. The Big Bang (physios) followed the emergence of self-replicating life (bios) that eventually became self-aware (noos). Though far from a linear story, the causal and subtle currents of Consciousness involution played an important role “before the beginning” as seen in Seth’s creation myth, and subsequently throughout the evolutionary process. Together, we call this involutionary/evolutionary process conscious creation. So what will next major stage of conscious creation feature? Though still the stuff of science fiction, Teilhard, Aurobindo, Wilber, and Seth/Jane Roberts provide evocative looks at what probable futures may hold in store for humanity.

Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a Jesuit priest, geologist, and paleontologist. His struggle to reconcile premodern Christian dogma with modern scientific breakthroughs produced a remarkable book The Phenomenon of Man. It was completed by 1940, though repressed by the Catholic Church, and not made available in English until 1959. However, it is still very relevant today, because he included Causal Consciousness in his theories, and yet, managed to maintain a scientific view of evolution.

Teilhard was the first to properly identify the three major stages of evolution to date. He called them the lithosphere, biosphere, and noosphere. (Geologists were big on spheres to describe different domains of planet earth, e.g., lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, etc.) He showed that the actions of biogenesis and noogenesis worked in concert, and were distinguishing features of the biosphere and noosphere.

Sir Julian Huxley (1887-1975), a biologist, worked with Teilhard for over ten years and was familiar with his work. He realized that Teilhard was one of the first people to integrate modern evolutionary theory within a larger philosophical and theological context.

“Through his combination of wide scientific knowledge with deep religious feeling and a rigorous sense of values, [Teilhard] has forced [premodern] theologians to view their ideas in the new perspective of evolution, and [modern] scientists to see the spiritual implications of their knowledge. He has both clarified and unified our vision of reality [my emphasis]. In the light of that new comprehension, it is no longer possible to maintain that science and religion must operate in thought-tight compartments or concern separate sectors of life; they are both relevant to the whole of human existence. The religiously-minded can no longer turn their backs upon the natural world, or seek escape from its imperfections in a supernatural world, or; nor can the materialistically-minded deny importance to spiritual experience and religious feeling.” (29)

So what was the goal of Teilhard’s postmodern evolutionary view? Christian theologians have a tradition called eschatology, which are metaphysical theories about how the world will end, often clothed in premodern religious dogma. When Teilhard looked ahead he saw what he called the Omega Point, the pull exerted by Causal Consciousness toward a final manifestation on earth. Interestingly, Teilhard briefly considered the possibility of off-world travel and galactic interaction of noospheres, but rejected them as less probable. I bring this up, because in this day of Star Trek-inspired science fiction, we best never say never! However, instead he thought it was more probable that,

“… our noosphere is destined to close in upon itself in [galactic] isolation, and that it is in a psychical rather than a spatial direction that it will find an outlet, without need to leave or overflow the earth. Hence, quite naturally the [evolutionary] notion of change of state recurs.

“Noogenesis rises upwards in us and through us unceasingly. … so as to shift its centre on to the transcendent centre of its increasing concentration. This will be the end of the spirit of the earth.

“The end of the world: the wholesale internal introversion upon itself of the noosphere, which has simultaneously reached the uttermost limit of its complexity and its centrality.

“The end of the world: the overthrow of equilibrium detaching the mind, fulfilled at last, from its material matrix, so that it will henceforth rest with all its weight on God-Omega [All-That-Is].

“The end of the world: critical point simultaneously of emergence and emersion, of maturation and escape.” (30) Thus, All-That-Is holds the potential for what we today would consider divine manifestation (Theos) through the Omega-Point. Of course, Teilhard also points out that we could always regress, go collectively senile, or self-destruct along the way. Again, nothing is set in stone.

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) was born in India, and educated in England where he was exposed to Western ideas and became a writer. After his return to India, he became a newspaper editor and leader of a nationalist movement. After a year in jail, he was introduced to yoga and meditation. Profoundly changed, he went on to found an ashram and dedicate the rest of his life to the study and practice of Advaita (nondual) Vedanta. Though his works are mainly philosophical and metaphysical, he is credited with synthesizing evolutionary theory with Eastern involutionary theory. Thus, his work does not include the detailed scientific references, seen for example, in Teilhard’s or Wilber’s work. Still, Aurobindo outlined a postmodern way to understand how Causal Consciousness creates, one that had a big influence on Wilber’s early work.

Aurobindo wrote The Life Divine (1949) over a period of years from 1914-1920. His version of the “Great Chain of Being” can be simplified into five major aspects nested within the three great fields of All-That-Is: Matter (physical), Life (physical), Mind (physical), Overmind (subtle), and Supermind (causal).

“The oldest Vedantic knowledge tells us of five degrees of our being, the material, the vital [Life], the mental, the ideal [Overmind], and the spiritual or beatific [Supermind] and to each of these grades of our soul there corresponds a grade of our substance, a sheath as it was called in the ancient figurative language. A later psychology found that these five sheaths of our substance were the material of three bodies, gross physical, subtle, and causal, in all of which the soul actually and simultaneously dwells, although there and now we are superficially conscious only of the material vehicle. But it is possible to come conscious in our other bodies as well and it is in fact the opening up of the veil between them and consequently between our physical, psychical [low subtle], and ideal [high subtle] personalities which is the cause of those ‘psychic’ and ‘occult’ phenomena that are now beginning to be increasingly though yet too little and too clumsily examined….” (31)

Further, notice that Matter is equivalent to the physiosphere, Life the biosphere, and Mind the noosphere, the three major stages of evolution to date. Also, Aurobindo’s Vedic ontology of physical, subtle, and causal sheaths or bodies are ontologically equivalent to our use of fields. In his cosmology, Supermind (All-That-Is) functions as the Primal Cause that fuels evolution through involution.

“Supermind … possesses the power of development, of evolution, of making explicit, and that power carries with it the other power of involution, of envelopment, of making implicit. In a sense, the whole of creation may be said to be a movement between two involutions, [Causal] Spirit in which all is involved and out of which all evolves downward to the other pole of Matter, Matter in which also all is involved and out of which all evolves upwards to the other pole of Spirit.” (32)

So what does this great sage see coming next in evolutionary terms? In the closing chapter, The Divine Life, Aurobindo explored probable futures. He wrestled with how the next great phase he called gnostic consciousness might manifest. Possibly in small enclaves and communities, but that has not worked to date in terms of the premodern religions. Though there was no clear path he could discern, he sensed that this next great stage of evolution, gnostic consciousness, would include a profound shift in consciousness and enhanced capacities.

“An entirely new consciousness in many individuals transforming their whole being, transforming their mental, vital, and physical nature-self, is needed for the new life to appear; only such a transformation of the general mind, life, body nature can bring into being a new worthwhile collective existence. The evolutionary [striving] must tend not merely to create a new type of mental beings but another order of beings who have raised their whole existence from our present mentalised animality to a greater spiritual level of the earth-nature.

“Any such complete transformation of the earth-life in a number of human beings could not establish itself altogether at once; even when the turning-point has been reached, the decisive line crossed, the new life in its beginnings would have to pass through a period of ordeal and arduous development.” (33)

Thus, Aurobindo points to the continued birth pangs as Consciousness attempts to manifest ever more fully in the physical field. In terms of increased psychic abilities, imagine what a planet of over six billion people might be like with the majority of adults have developed abilities like Jane Roberts or Ramana Maharshi, where psi phenomena like telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and telekinesis are the norm. The paranormal would simply be normal. As always, time will tell.

Now, we move to Ken Wilber (b.1949). The consistent theme in his books is the synthesis of Eastern and Western psychologies to formulate a viable postmodern theory of consciousness, one that integrates the essential paradox of Consciousness as simultaneously transcendent and immanent in our universe. He was strongly influenced by Aurobindo in two early works The Atman Project (1980) and Up From Eden (1981). The former detailed stages of human development and the latter explored stages of cultural development. Both works are backed up by considerable amounts of scientific, philosophical, and theological research to identify the leading edges of individual and cultural evolution.

The The Atman Project outlines seventeen potential stages of individual development. (34) While there is plenty of data from modern developmental research on familiar stages – like emotional, sexual, egoic, etc. – the main challenge is how to get enough data on the higher transpersonal stages. There just are not large enough samples for adequate research right now on what Wilber calls psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual stages of development gleaned from Eastern psychologies.

“Modern developmental psychology has, on the whole, simply devoted itself to the exploration and explanation of the various levels, stages, and strata of the human constitution – mind, personality, psychosexuality, character, consciousness. The cognitive studies of Piaget and Werner, the works of Loevinger and Arieti and Maslow and Jakobson, the moral development studies of Kohlberg – all subscribe, in whole or part, to the concept of stratified stages of increasing differentiation, integration, and unity.

“Having said that much, we are at once entitled to ask, ‘What, then, is the highest stage of unity to which one may aspire?’ Or, perhaps we should not phrase the question in such ultimate terms, but simply ask instead, ‘What is the nature of some of the higher and highest stages of development? What forms of unity are disclosed in the most developed souls of the human species?

“The problem with that type of question lies in finding examples of truly higher-order personalities – and in deciding exactly what constitutes a higher-order personality in the first place. My own feeling is that as humanity continues its collective evolution, this will become very easy to decide, because more and more ‘enlightened’ personalities will show up in data populations, and psychologists will be forced, by their statistical analyses, to include higher-order profiles in their developmental stages. In the meantime, one’s idea of ‘higher-order’ or ‘highly-developed’ remains rather philosophic. Nonetheless, those few gifted souls who have bothered to look at this problem have suggested that the world’s great mystics and sages represent some of the very highest, if not the highest, of all stages of human development.” (35)

Jane Roberts presents an interesting case in point. Her abilities showed evidence of subtle field capacities. For example, Seth trance, Sumari singing, Helper, worldview books, her psychic library, heroic dimensions and personages, and more. But she was only one person who was ahead of her time, and well above the collective center of gravity.

So what lies next in terms of individual development? Wilber calls the twelfth stage of human development the centaur, and it features a postconventional cognitive capacity called vision-logic, based in part, on Gebser’s integral-aperspectival logic. Vision-logic uses fuzzy logic to see networks within networks, and contexts within contexts. It can situate multiple, even contradictory facts in a worldcentric mosaic. Thus, the centaur and its ability to use vision-logic hint at what emergent postmodern worldviews may look like on a global scale.

“It is the integrative power of vision-logic, I believe, and not the indissociation of [premodern] tribal magic or the [premodern] imperialism of mythic involvement that is desperately needed on a global scale. For it is [postmodern] vision-logic with its centauric/planetary worldview that, in my opinion, holds the only hope for the integration of the biosphere and noosphere, the supranational organization of planetary consciousness, the genuine recognition of ecological balance, the unrestrained and unforced forms of global discourse, the nondominating and noncoercive forms of federated states, the unrestrained flow of worldwide communicative exchange, the production of genuine world citizens, and the enculturation of female agency (i.e., the integration of male and female in both the noosphere and the biosphere) – all of which, in my opinion, is nevertheless simply the platform for the truly interesting forms of higher and transpersonal states of consciousness lying yet in our collective future – if there is one.” (36)

In Up From Eden Wilber detailed cultural stages of evolution, as influenced by Gebser, into eight major stages. (37) Today we are in the midst of the fourth or rational-mental-egoic stage. Thus, the emergent fifth stage is what he calls psychic-nirmanakaya-shamanistic.

“The Nirmanakaya Age will mean a society of men and women who, by virtue of an initial glimpse into transcendence: will start to understand vividly their common humanity and brother/sisterhood; will transcend roles based on bodily differences of skin color and sex; will grow in mental-psychic clarity; will make policy decisions on the basic of intuition as well as rationality; will see the same Consciousness in each and every soul, indeed, in all creation, and will start to act correspondingly….

“In short, a true Wisdom Culture will start to emerge, a culture which (1) uses the body appropriately in diet (uroboros) and in sex (typhon), both free of repression/oppression on the one hand, and obsessive/compulsive overindulgence on the other; (2) uses the membership mind appropriately in unrestrained communication, free of domination and propaganda; (3) uses the ego appropriately in free exchanges of mutual self-esteem; and (4) uses the psyche level appropriately in a bonding-consciousness that shows every person to be an ultimately equal member of the mystical body of Christ/Krishna/Buddha. And that stage, if lived benignly and sanely, will prepare the way for level 6, or Sambhogakaya descent [theosphere] at large. But that is so far off, I needn’t even speculate.”

“The point, rather, is that a significant minority of individuals are today beginning the transformation into transpersonal realms.” (38)

According to Wilber, our collective center of gravity has evolved just past a halfway point. If we define All-That-Is as a “Great Chain of Being” as matter, body, mind, soul, and Consciousness, then we have manifest three-fifths of its potentials to date as matter (physios), body (bios), and mind (noos). What remains, then, are soul (psychos) and Consciousness (Theos) to manifest in some kind of as yet unimagined way.

“… once the Great Chain is plugged into an evolutionary and developmental view, it can happily coexist with much of the God of the modern West, namely, evolution. Moreover, it raises the stunning possibility: if evolution has thus far unfolded the first three-fifths of the Great Chain, isn’t it likely that it will continue in the coming years and unfold the higher two-fifths? If that is so, God lies down the road, not up it; Spirit is found by going forward, not backward; the Garden of Eden lies in our future, not our past.” (39)

In collective terms, then, Wilber sees the emergence of what he calls the theosphere as the next major stage of evolution. But we are a long, long way from that.

Finally, what did Seth/Jane Roberts (1929-1984) have to say about most probable futures? Well, Seth said just that: the future consists of infinite probable selves, cultures, and universes, so there are potentials for great growth, regressive nightmares, and everything in between. Seth talked about the return of what he called the Christ entity in Seth Speaks, Chapter 21, The Meaning of Religion. Why Seth played into the messiah mythos and premodern prophecy is beyond our scope, but he points out that by the year 2075, a major spiritual change will occur on a global scale. However, since all futures are more or less probable, and Seth does not promote predetermined futures, take the following with a grain of salt.

“… Now these [biblical] prophecies were given in terms of the current culture at that time, and therefore, while the stage has been set, the distortions are deplorable, for this Christ will not come at the end of your world as the prophecies have been maintaining.

“He will not come to reward the righteous and send evildoers to eternal doom. He will, however, begin a new religious drama. A certain historical continuity will be maintained. As happened once before, however, He will not be generally known for who He is. There will be no glorious proclamation to which the whole world will bow. He will return to straighten out Christianity, which will be in a shambles at the time of His arrival, and to set up a new system of thought when the world is sorely in need of one.

“By that time, all religions will be in severe crisis. He will undermine religious organizations – not unite them. His message will be that of the individual in relation to All-That-Is. He will clearly state methods by which each individual can attain a state of intimate contact with his own entity [inner ego]; the entity [subtle field] to some extent being man’s mediator with All-That-Is [causal field].

“By 2,075, all of this will be already accomplished.

“You may make a note here that Nostradamus saw the dissolution of the Roman Catholic Church as the end of the world. He could not imagine civilization without it, hence many of his later predictions should be read with this in mind.

“The third personality of Christ will indeed be known as a great psychic, for it is He who will teach humanity to use those inner senses that alone make true spirituality possible. Slayers and victims will change roles as reincarnational memories rise to the surface of consciousness. Through the development of these abilities, the sacredness of all life will be intimately recognized and appreciated.” (40)

Thus, Seth hints that most probable futures in the next seventy years will birth yet another religious drama. Will it occur with large numbers of people pushing into centauric levels of awareness? Unless this drama occurs within a population whose majority has widened into postconventional stages of cognitive and moral development, it could be a regressive nightmare. I would also request from this “messiah” that s/he work on all forms of regressive fundamentalism, not just the Christian and Islamic versions, but scientism as well.

Now, what did Jane Roberts see in terms of probable futures? Since she was a poet and writer, she explored her psychic abilities outside of premodern religious and modern scientific worldviews. Jane was not an evolutionary scientist or developmental psychologist, yet she wrote three theoretical Aspect Psychology books to explain her personal experiences. In the second book, Psychic Politics (1976), Jane received material in altered states from what she called The Library. Part of this material was called The Codicils. They provided “… a fresh hypothesis upon which to build a new, better civilization,” and thus, form the foundation of Roberts’s optimistic vision for the future of humanity.

1. “All of creation is sacred and alive, each part connected to each other part, and each communicating in a creative cooperative commerce in which the smallest and the largest are equally involved.

2. “The physical senses present one unique version of reality, in which being is perceived in a particular dimensionalized sequence, built up through neurological patterning, and is the result of one kind of neurological focus. There are alternate neurological routes, biologically acceptable, and other sequences so far not chosen.

3. “Our individual self-government and our political organizations are by-products of sequential perception, and our exterior methods of communication set up patterns that correlate with, and duplicate, our synaptic behavior. We lock ourselves into certain structures of reality in this way. 4. “Our sequential prejudiced perception is inherently far more flexible than we recognize, however. There are half steps – other unperceived impulses – that leap the nerve ends, too fast and too slow for our usual focus. Recognition of these can be learned and encouraged, bringing in perceptive data that will trigger changes in usual sense response, filling out potential sense spectra with which we are normally not familiar.

5. “This greater possible sense spectrum includes increased perception of inner bodily reality in terms of cellular identity and behavior; automatic conscious control of bodily processes; and increased perception of exterior conditions as the usual senses become more vigorous. (Our sight, for example, is not nearly as efficient as it could be. Nuances of color, texture, and depth could be expanded and our entire visual area attain a brilliance presently considered exceptional or supernormal.)” (41)

6. “Each person is a unique version of an inner model that is in itself a bank of potentials, variations, and creativity. The psyche is a seed of individuality and selfhood, cast in space-time but ultimately independent of it.

7. “We are born in many times and places, but not in a return of identity as we understand it; not as a copy in different clothes, but as a new self ever-rising out of the psyche’s life as the new ruler rises to the podium or throne, in a psychic politics as ancient as humanity.

8. “Civilizations both past and present represent projections of inner selfhood, and mirror the state of the mass psyche at any given time. We hold memory and knowledge of past civilizations as we hold unconscious memories of our private early current-life experiences.

9. “From our present, we exert force upon the past as well as the future, forming our ideas of the past and reacting accordingly. We actually project events into our own new past.

10. “Each generation forms such a new past, one that exists as surely as the present; not just as an imaginary construct but as a practical platform – a newly built past – upon which we build our present.

11. “Options and alternate models for selfhood and civilizations exist in a psychic pattern of probabilities from which we can choose to actualize an entirely new life system.” (42)

“Acceptance of these first codicils would expand practical knowledge of the self, break down barriers that are the result of our prejudiced perception, and restructure personal, social, and political life.

“Concepts of the self and practical experience of the self must be broadened if the race is to develop its true potentials. Only an evolution of consciousness can alter the world view that appears to our official line of [modern] consciousness.” (43)

Roberts had more to say in her final Aspects book The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981). The God of Jane concept showed a deep, personal connection to the Causal Aspect of All-That-Is within the subtle field, to what Roberts called the source self. So the God of You serves as a mediator to All-That-Is. No institution can own it, regulate it, or control it. The political and economic implications obviously require new social structures to support these values.

A Psychic Manifesto is a passionate poem fueled by a lifetime of transpersonal insight that rejects premodern and modern constraints, and proclaims the only authentic way to know Consciousness is through unmediated, direct experience. It summarized Roberts’s postmodern worldview poetically, and serves as a counterpart to her finale, An American Vision, that summarized her postmodern worldview theoretically – “a public vision in which we all uphold a democracy of spirit, and insist upon interpreting not just the Bible but the nature of reality for ourselves!” (44)

Thus, Roberts’s postmodern vision was passionately fueled by more than twenty years of transpersonal experience. She sensed the potentials that lie just around the next evolutionary bend, and was optimistic about our chances going forward. And as we will see in the next section, Seth’s vision of potential dream-art sciences outline yet another practical and optimistic view of probable futures. In the mean time, we have come a long, long way up from primordial Eden toward the collective realization of our divine nature, but still have a long way to go.